Maria Schneider - Sky Blue [Standard Edition] CD -(Wallet style packaging with one booklet)

Maria Schneider (Author), Maria Schneider Orchestra (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Label: ArtistShare
• ASIN: B000UCZU3K
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,157 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Official fan-funded ArtistShare release! This is the Standard Edition release of Sky Blue. It is a wallet style packaging with one booklet. Same great music as the LTD Editions version but with standard packaging.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GRAMMY WINNER-MARIA SCHNEIDER'S AWESOME JAZZ ORCHESTRA AND BEAUTIFUL MUSIC, September 26, 2007

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RBSProds "rbsprods" (Deep in the heart of Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maria Schneider - Sky Blue [Standard Edition] CD -(Wallet style packaging with one booklet) (Audio CD)

Five BIG Stars!! This is a wonderful big band jazz performance by the awesome Grammy-winning and multiple DownBeat Jazz Poll-winning composer, arranger, and orchestra leader Maria Schneider. Her large 17 piece group comes up big with a HUGE performance on her third CD. With superb soloists, unusual shifting tempos, and orchestrations that range from solo instruments out of tempo to huge dense orchestral colorations unlike any you'll find in jazz or any other music, this is wonderful jazz that is very inspiring and intellectually stimulating. Ms Schneider is influenced by her mentor, the legendary Gil Evans, but bears her own individual music stamp with quicksilver music that ranges from deep introspection to high exultation. She paints on a huge sonic canvas that at once evokes the sweeping strokes of painter Jackson Pollock and the pointillism of Georges Seurat, while giving seven of her talented musicians lots of solo time in their respective songs, which shows the capabilities of the overall orchestra. Neither conventional 4/4 swing nor New Age, it's very exotic & fascinating stuff that pulled me into the sonic canvas. It's the direct descendant of the symphonic Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Charles Mingus, and maestro Evans, but with her own adventurous twists and turns.

Each song is a 'Piece De Resistance' in itself using multiple tempos, extensive solo time, dense sonic layers, and unusual effects. On "The 'Pretty' Road", Ingrid Jensen's blazing serpentine-like solo goes from flugelhorn to trumpet to electronic trumpet layers. Guest vocalist Luciana Souza wordlessly soars above it all. "Aires de Lando" is a halting, tango-like theme with a wild virtousic clarinet solo by Scott Robinson that builds to a crescendo with the orchestra pushing and complementing the solo. The whole orchestra virtually 'comps' behind the solo in a really weird and wonderful effect that almost approaches a solo in itself as it surges ahead of the clarinet at places. A unusual but terrific performance!! "Rich's Piece" has a air of foreboding and dissonance behind the extensive slithery Rich Perry tenor sax solo, with rising waves of sound that dissipate only to rise again, and shifting instrumental clusters of sound, with Jay Anderson's free roaming bass commenting underneath. The epic "Cerulean Skies", the 2007 Grammy winner for Instrumental Composition, is almost 22 minutes of musical wonder, populated by a forest of orchestral bird and forest-like effects that bend perfectly to the arc of the song's theme before the entire song lifts and soars into the sonic sky, with a hip backbeat and a dash of funk. Grammy-nominated reed man Donny McCaslin gets off a wild tenor sax solo that ranks as one of the year's best jazz solos as he surfs the valleys, mountains, and canyons of Ms Schneider's awesome orchestrations with Ms Souza again making an appearance. But this is only half of this epic sonic masterwork, I'll leave the rest of this discovery to you. Ms Schneider's music is brought to us through fan-financed ArtistShare, whose website sells it either directly or through other specific sellers. After a month of being blown away by these performances, this wonderful Grammy-nominated CD with the 2007 Best Instrumental Composition Grammy-winning "Cerulean Skies," gets My Highest Recommendation. Five AMAZING Stars!!
(audio CD, 63:11 total running time, LP-type CD-sized sleeve, with liner notes in a separate booklet insert.)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deeply-satisfying roller-coaster of emotions, February 5, 2009

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Bob Wright "Bob Wright" (Hitchin, Herts, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maria Schneider - Sky Blue [Standard Edition] CD -(Wallet style packaging with one booklet) (Audio CD)

Maria Schneider - "Sky Blue" (audio CD, 2007)

This is the latest CD by a modern jazz orchestral composer/arranger/conductor who has already deservedly established a great reputation. It contains a set of 5 separately-commissioned pieces, each with its own very distinct and distinctive character. Maria's own liner notes provide detailed information about how they came to be inspired and created. The first, "The 'Pretty' Road", with a particularly attractive central theme, reflects happy childhood memories. The second captures flavours of Peruvian music and rhythms, while the third is a ruminative piece framing Rich Perry's tenor saxophone playing. "Cerulean Skies" celebrates the joyful arrival of migratory visitors to New York's Central Park. Finally, the title piece features Steve Wilson's soprano saxophone over rich orchestral writing reflecting a mood of deep personal sadness but an eventually uplifting realisation. The musicians in the orchestra - most of whom have worked with Maria before - perform superbly, to do justice to her excellent material. Bob Wright, UK

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid, September 11, 2009

By 

Gerald L. Ware "JazzWare Ltd." (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maria Schneider - Sky Blue [Standard Edition] CD -(Wallet style packaging with one booklet) (Audio CD)

Maria Schneider has done it again. On a scale of 1 to 10 I am rating this production a 10 and a 5 Star rating from Downbeat Magazine and no I am not the music critic for that magazine. Keep up the excellent composing Ms. Schneider. Someday we will meet and I will be able to give her the appropriate accolade for her composing skills. You must first be a good listener and without a doubt she is!